Friday, June 03, 2016

Payday Lenders: Building a Better Mousetrap

4 Comments:

Anonymous said...

These guys started out as the bad boys outside of your friendly neighborhood Bank and only prospered because the big Banks refused to take in millions of people they didn’t want. At one time the Banks did loosen up but that was ...when…way back in the 80’s?

I don't get it, if a person borrows as much as 10X the regular interest rate and still makes the payments (and a gold mine in interest payments), why would a regular Bank not want him?

The best the mighty Congress could do was limit their distance from the nearest Military base to keep them from taking advantage of our poor solders (a raise would have helped), nor did it stop the solders from applying in Alternate ways (phone, internet, mail, drive farther etc.). So the payday lenders got smart, first they joined the same industry group as the big Banks so the outside Bad Boys became “fraternity brothers!” Some the big Banks acquired some Payday Lenders (what a racquet!), others even (With our friends the Hedge Fund Managers) acquired banks – especially around 2008 when Banks were going for pennies to the dollar.Outside of capping Interest rates (forgive me, I lost my mind for a second!), there’s nothing the government can do.

Erik: Good summation of the payday loan industry's history. Elizabeth Warren has made some scathing speeches about them, but they have too much political clout -- along with everybody else in the finance industry -- for any politicians or regulatory agencies to be able to touch them.

Jim: I think she's great, but I don't know if American voters are ready or willing yet to elect two women to the POTUS and VP positions. I'm more than ready for this, but we're talking about a country that might actually elect Donald Trump.